About [2], BitGrid: If I read correctly, that concept maps really well to LUTs as used in FPGAs (but note it's not the same!). Its author/inventor Mike Warot

About [2], BitGrid: If I read correctly, that concept maps really well to LUTs as used in FPGAs (but note it's not the same!). Its author/inventor Mike Warot has the simple but useful idea of making the configuration space of such a device a simple memory array (like RAM or EEPROM cells). Write some bits to a memory location -> cell [x,y] in the device's grid is configured. This would make it trivial to control/interface such a 'compute grid' to traditional cpus. To a cpu it would just look like regular RAM. Anyone know if there's work towards applying that idea to FPGAs? It would basically evaporate the problem of [closed source FPGA vendor toolchains]. Obviously, bitstreams produced by FPGA vendor tools will do a somewhat similar thing. But what/how exactly is opaque. Not to mention encrypted bitstreams, read-protection & what have you. Hence require re-engineering effort for open source tool support. Turning this into a dead simple 1:1 mapping would be a huge step forward.